


Phoenix Rising

by athersgeo



Category: Bourne (Damon movies)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-18
Updated: 2016-12-18
Packaged: 2018-09-09 08:43:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,341
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8884411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/athersgeo/pseuds/athersgeo
Summary: She's like the ancient myth, being reborn from the ashes of her old life.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Northland](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Northland/gifts).



> No betas were harmed in the writing of this story - all mistakes my own.
> 
> I hope this goes some way to giving Nicky some justice!

Phoenix Rising

The last thing she remembers is pain. Excruciating, burning pain. A remarkably analytical corner of her brain catalogues the feeling: so this is what it feels like to be shot. The rest of her wants to curl in on herself and scream and sob but the pain is so intense that she can barely move.

She finds there wherewithal to toss Bourne the locker key, there's another flash of pain and then everything goes dark...

...until it isn't.

She jerks awake again, awash with more pain and confusion. She screams and there are tears and there are hands on her, pushing her back. There are words but they don't make sense. Then,

"Easy, easy. You are safe."

The accent is thick and cloying but she hears the words and understands them. She tries to relax, but the pain is strong and she barely feels it when they inject her but the blessed shroud of pain relief feels cool and so good and she lets it help her drift away.

Her second awakening is better. The pain is less and she can open her eyes and see without her vision being hazed by tears. She's in a hospital room, all white and sterile, and there's a nurse sitting at her bedside, almost like an armed guard.

"You need pain killers?" the nurse asks, seeing she's awake.

Not an armed guard, a translator. She moves her mouth and croaks a negative. The nurse smiles and nods.

"Water, then?"

She croaks a yes, and a cup is held to her lips. Two sips is all she's permitted but two sips is all it takes to restore her voice. "Where am I?"

"Athens."

She runs the place name through her memories and remembers. Bourne. His father. The files. Being shot – she had been shot, hadn't she? The snippets are disjointed and confused. "What happened?"

"A bullet, here," the nurse gently presses on a bandage to the back of her shoulder – it brings a small burst of pain, but she can tell the wound is healing, "and here," and the nurse gently touches the side of her head.

She catalogues both positions. Shoulder wound probably entry with no exit – not fatal but painful and probably required surgery for the lodged bullet.. Head wound a graze – a rare miss for a shooter trained as a sniper – but more than enough to knock her out.

"You were found," the nurse continues. "During the riots."

That made sense, and yet, "Not arrested?"

The nurse smiles again as she resumes her seat. "Not police. Doctor. Lied to keep you safe."

She musters a smile at this, but the short conversation has left her exhausted so she lets her eyes slide shut. There are implications and problems and things she needs to do, but for now, she can simply heal.

The next few days – she isn't sure how many – pass in a similar fashion. Each time she wakes, she's a little better. A little less in pain. A little clearer in her thoughts. At some point, she asks for a pen and some paper, and she starts to make notes to try and connect up all the disjointed dots.

A day into that process and the thought that this must have been how Jason Bourne felt flickers through her mind. It makes her laugh until her shoulder hurts. It's not quite accurate, of course: she knows who she is; it's just the last six months that have become jumbled. Still, it's another point that she has in common with him.

She wonders where he went after Athens.

She wonders if he read the files.

At four days on from asking for the paper and pen (she's been counting), she asks for news papers that carry international news. It takes another day, but her nurse manages to find a copy of the New York Times and there, on the front page, is something of an answer. Robert Dewy's dead (no great loss, she thinks) under mysterious circumstances, in Las Vegas. She reads of shots fired, a tech mogul fighting for his life and a massive car chase on the Las Vegas strip.

She smiles.

He might say he's not a crusader for truth and justice, but that's exactly what Bourne is. In his own way, at least.

At eight days on from getting the pen and paper, the doctor signs off on her release from hospital. His English is far better than that of the nurses, so she's able to properly thank him – though he waves it off.

"I saw what happened," he tells her. "I would have been protesting, too."

That isn't why she was shot – even if she doesn't entirely remember everything clearly, she knows that much – but it's a decent enough cover.

Once she's actually clothed in a brand new outfit provided by one of the nurses and standing in the smoggy air of an Athens morning, however, she's at a loss. Having checked her date of admission and compared it to today she knows she's been in hospital for nearly three weeks. In all that time, no-one with agency connections has come looking for her, and while she was under an assumed name, it had been their asset who'd shot at her. She would have expected them to have followed up, just to be sure. Particularly after what happened with Bourne. But no-one had.

It takes a block of walking for the full import of that lack to sink in. After being on the run for nine years – ever since Tangiers and the fall of Blackbriar and Treadstone – there no-one looking for her because they believe her to be dead. It's powerful knowledge.

And yet, it also leaves her feeling somewhat hollow.

She's been cut adrift.

She can go anywhere, do anything, be anyone. She's managed to soak away enough money in various hidden accounts that she could, if she wanted, choose to simply lie on a Greek beach sipping Ouzo.

That would be the safe option. If the agency think she's dead, why risk showing them otherwise?

Something in her rebels at such a cop-out, though. The injustices, the black ops, the corruption that she's been trying to fight ever since Jason Bourne had forcibly wrenched her eyes open to it all, in a Berliner U-Bahn station, is still there and she still has the desire to make a difference. It was that desire that drove her into the arms of the CIA in the first place; it had driven her to try and keep them honest. Maybe it still did.

She allows herself a moment to smile. She will keep up the fight. It's the right thing to do. She'll shine that light. Keep exposing things that old men in plush offices want to keep hidden. Keep atoning for her own role in Treadstone.

And maybe, one day, she'll cross paths with Jason Bourne once more.

Maybe, one day, he'll have finally banished his demons.

She snorts. And maybe, one day, she'll have banished hers, too.

She pauses and spots a piece of ancient statuary – some barely remembered piece of Athens' glorious past. It takes a moment to recognise it, but when she does she realises it's a phoenix. That makes her smile as nothing else has in a long time. It reminds her of her – in a way, she's like the ancient myth; being reborn from the ashes of her old life.

She starts walking again, this time with a purpose. She needs to retrieve things that she stashed on her journey south. There's a laptop and another copy of the files she gave to Bourne – something offline and utterly untraceable that she can use as a road map to point her in the right direction. And true, sooner or later this new crusade would bring down agency ire upon her, but if she did it right, they'd be looking for a ghost.

Or a Phoenix.

She's been reborn here. No reason she can't be reborn somewhere else, somewhen down the line.

~Ends~


End file.
